United States or Dominica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When, however, he saw what Von Donop had done he returned on the twenty-ninth to Trenton, sent out scouting parties, and roused the country so that in every bit of forest along the road to Princeton there were men, dead shots, to make difficult a British advance to retake Trenton. The reverse had brought consternation at New York.
As the general plan was arranged, Gates was to march from Bristol with two thousand men; Ewing was to cross at Trenton; Putnam was to come up from Philadelphia; and Griffin was to make a diversion against Donop.
The fortifications consisted of extensive outer works, within which was an entrenchment eight or nine feet high, boarded and fraized. Late in the evening of the 22d Count Donop appeared before the fort and attacked it with great intrepidity. It was defended with equal resolution by the brave garrison of Rhode Island Continentals, under command of Col. Christopher Greene.
I returned late in the evening, to order my horse to be saddled and sent to me before breakfast next morning; for I kept it at no cost in my aunt's ample stable. To my horror, I found a sentinel at the door, and the hall full of army baggage. In the parlour was a tall Hessian, General von Knyphausen, and Count Donop and others, smoking, much at their ease.
The German came with the Celt in almost equal force enough to more than balance their countrymen under Donop, Riedesel and Knyphausen. The attention drawn to the colonies by the ministerial aggressions thus contributed to strengthen them for the contest.
Little rest was given to his hard-worked troops, and they were sent off again within the week under the command of Von Donop, with the result that on February 8th, near Wolmaranstad, they captured Potgieter's laager with forty Boer prisoners.
They asked the first person they met what had become of the troops, and they were told that Colonel Donop, who commanded, had marched an hour before with his whole force of 2000 men toward Mount Holly, leaving only 80 men in garrison at Bordentown. "We are too late," Harold said. "They have gone by the road and we kept straight through the woods and so missed them."
"Did they immediately attack Forts Mifflin and Mercer, papa?" asked Lulu. "It took some little time to make the needed preparations," replied the captain. "It was on the 21st of October that Count Donop, with twelve hundred picked Hessians, crossed the Delaware at Cooper's Ferry, and marched to the attack of Fort Mercer.
The ships having been ordered to cooperate with Count Donop, the Augusta, with four smaller vessels, passed the lower line of chevaux-de-frise, opposite to Billingsport, and lay above it, waiting until the assault should be made on the fort. The flood tide setting in about the time the attack commenced they moved with it up the river.
The gallant defence of Red Bank, in which the black regiment bore a part, is among the proofs of their valor." In this contest it will be recollected that four hundred men met and repulsed, after a terrible and sanguinary struggle, fifteen hundred Hessian troops, headed by Count Donop.
Word Of The Day